Take a Third Option

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"There's always a third way, and it's not a combination of the other two ways. It's a different way."

— David Carradine

"We live in a three dimensional space at minimum (SIX directional). Could you please pay attention to this fundamental fact of life already, and stop thinking in bloody binary? IF you are thinking in Binary, THEN you may be causing problems, OR you have found the correct solution AND may have not actually thought NOR learned anything at all, ELSE you may not have been hit by the consequences yet. IF. THEN. AND. OR. NOR. ELSE. Those six little words, plus concepts like QUERY, BECAUSE, and UNCERTAIN, are the fundamentals of actually thinking whilst running the English Programming Language for the Human Operating System. Thank you."

— A Random Green Oni operating under the pseudonym of Charles for this Trope

If the individual is bamboozled by the shiny Morton's Fork, then they will also likely fail their hero test, or else the individual may get lucky and one of the two branches of Morton's Fork will actually be the Good End in disguise.

If the individual then responds with, "I don't like those choices; I'm taking a third option!" then the third option is probably something completely unorthodox and or seemingly suicidal. Yet this typically may turn out to be the best choice after all, or at the very least, it hopefully turns out to be better than what the consequences of the other two options were. Unfortunately, everybody is a critic after the fact, and will immediately point out several dozen things that the the individual on the scene should have done better, which begs the question: where are all of these bright ideas from these bright individuals when they are actually needed and or wanted?

In general, a Third Option, just like the First Option and the Second Option, usually has three basic requirements to seem plausible after the fact: time, resources, and knowledge. A Third Option is useless if you don't have time to implement it, don't have (usable) resources/power, or don't have knowledge of it, or can't think of it because actually thinking is not typically a prerequisite burden for the classical hero or individuals in general. Depending on how well that rule is followed, the solution will usually either be incredibly awesome or incredibly stupid, or simply different and thus considered to be weird, strange, magical, evil, or grounds for ostracization and other forms of punishment simply because option three wasn't option one or two and the proponents of option one and two are selfish fools who don't like things that are different and aren't theirs. Deciding which examples are which is an exercise left to the reader, although Foreshadowing possible answers can help win them over.

In terms of personality, the Third Personality can be coined as the "Green Oni." The Green Oni may or may not exhibit some combination of traits from Red Oni and Blue Oni. For example, Alice can be the loud, extroverted, and Book Dumb Red Oni to Bob's silent, introverted, and Insufferable Genius Blue Oni. They often argue a lot, such as the objective of the mission, political alignments, or just where to go out for dinner in general. In order for their relationship to work, they often go to Charles to resolve their problems, who is ambiverted and socially accepted everywhere, and has a degree in engineering from Oxbridge.

Or Charles could just be completely and utterly wacko and of no help to anyone at all. Or Charles could be comatose, but Alice and Bob will talk to him anyway, or possibly to the potted plant, simply because they aren't talking to each other right now. Or Charles could be a socially unnacceptable petty tyrant that refuses to listen to anybody else. Or Charles could be just plain not interested in getting involved because Alice and Bob are always knocking on his door demanding that he solves their problems without sitting down and actually thinking of option three, four, five, six, etcetera, for themselves—and he doesn't even remember giving them permission to do so in the first place. It's even possible that Charles could be the subordinate, child, or other powerless individual related to Alice and Bob, and he has to put up with the clear raging insanity of Alice and Bob and all the other letters of the alphabet whilst Alice and Bob blithely refuse to listen to Charles saying "Option Three. 'Nuff Said. Every Single Time," through accident of birth. God help Charles if the latter is the case, because no one else will.

Green Oni characters are simply those those that do not fit into neatly into the boxes of Red Oni or Blue Oni, and they may not like being called Magenta, because that would be a Secondary, lesser colour under the RGB Primary colour system—or Purple, as that is at best a Tertiary colour. The Green Oni may be rare, and typically not well liked by the more common Red Oni and/or Blue Oni, unless they are somehow useful, in which case the Red and Blue Onis will likely viciously abuse and blatantly use the Green Oni whilst under the mistaken impression that they are doing the Green Oni a favour. Those with Autism-spectrum disorders may be a real-life example of the Green Oni Trope.

In most Power Trio scenarios, when The Spock [Mr. Straw Logic if on a bad day] advocates one course of action and The McCoy [The Doctor: An Acceptable Target] insists upon the other, The Kirk [The Destined Hero, That Lucky Bastard, The Gary Stu, Mr. Always Right In The End] will be particularly fond of using this method as a solution to the problem of the week. This is also the best way to deal with a Xanatos Gambit. A true Magnificent Bastard will have anticipated that, though.

Compare Third-Option Adaptation, where an interactive work is adapted to another medium and the producers decide to Take a Third Option in order to avoid endorsing one of the original options over others.

Example subpages

Examples

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Fairy Tales

It's really more of a sixth option, but in "The Five Sons" the titular group have rescued a princess, and each has an equal right to marry her. After much argument and rumination, the king decides to marry the princess off to their father, since he'd technically had the biggest role in her rescue (by fathering the kids and urging them to go find useful trades).

Game Theory

A classic from Mathematics: the Truel, a duel with three participants. Mr. White has a one in three chance of hitting his target, Mr. Grey a two in three chance, and Mr. Black is a perfect shot. To make things fair,note a phony justification Mr. White has the first shot. Who should he shoot?

If he shoots at Mr. Grey, he might kill him, then Mr. Black has the next shot. Oops.

If he shoots at Mr. Black, seemingly the better option, he might kill him, then Mr. Grey has the next shot. Oh dear.note Mr. White has a 1-in-7 chance of survival here.

If he takes a third option and shoots into the air, Mr. Grey and Mr. Black shoot at each other until one dies (each would consider the other the greater threat), then Mr. White has the first shot in a duel.note Against Mr. Black, Mr. White's survival chances are one in three. Against Mr. Grey, his chances are three in seven. Still lousy, but better than otherwise. He gets the same benefit if he misses whoever he aims at.

In the story of "Alice's Restaurant", Arlo Guthrie, upon being summoned to the police station over a matter of a pile of trash, surmises that the police officer will either commend Arlo and his friends for their honesty (which even Arlo says is highly improbable) or verbally chew them out. Instead of either of those possibilities, they get arrested.

... but when we got to the police officer station, it turned out there was a third possibility...

Occurs in the story of "The Choice", by Ben Weiner. Or, parodied, rather. The two options are soup or salad, and the third option, eventually suggested by the impatient waiter, is soup and salad.

"You could go with this, or you could go with that... or you could go with us."

Said lyric is taken from "The Choice Is Yours" by Black Sheep.

In "Luigi's Ballad" by Starbomb, Princess Peach is presented with choosing between the somewhat-risque Mario, or the more emotional Luigi. She ends up choosing Toad, because "his whole body is shaped like a dick", to which both Mario and Luigi concur.

In the folk ballad, "Thomas the Rhymer" the Queen of Elfland notes the road to Heaven is overgrown with briers and the road to Hell is broad and even. On the other hand there is the narrow, winding, and/or hidden (depending on the version of the ballad) that goes to fair Elfland .... which is where the Queen of Elfland takes Thomas.

"I'd Rather Miss You" by Little Texas:

And if I had to choose between living without you And learning to love someone new I'd rather miss you

In Poets of the Fall's "Drama for Life," when battling with his Enemy Within, an out-of-control creative impulse compared to a rampaging bull, the singer elects to stop fighting a win-or-lose struggle and take a chance on riding it out, seeing where it takes him.

Just one chance to kill it dead But I will embrace it Into the darkness on we ride To gamble is all

Steve Albini was asked which of the two he prefers in an online forum some years earlier. His response was The Stooges.

Newspaper Comics

Averted in Dilbert when he is visited by Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light. Phil offers him two options as punishment for his sins, one where he will have a meaningless job, but will be paid highly, and one where he will have an important job, but be paid badly. You do not see which he chooses, but Dilbert is delighted, because both are better than his current position (where he is paid badly for meaningless work).

Played for laughs in one Drabble strip. That week, Ralph had been harassed by the new water inspector trying to encourage him to use less water. One day, the inspector admonishes him for using a glass to get some water since it would take two more glasses to clean it. He tells him to use paper cups instead. Norman then points out that using paper cups would mean cutting down more trees to make more cups. Ralph's solution doesn't sit well with his wife.

Honeybunch: For goodness sakes, Ralph! Don't drink right from the faucet!

A comic from The Far Side has people discussing a glass that has water in half of it. One says, "The glass is half full!" One says, "The glass is half empty!" One says, "Half full... no, wait, half empty... no, wait..." And the last guy is shouting, "Hey! I ordered a cheeseburger!"

One FoxTrot strip had Paige asking Peter whether a glass of soda in front of her is half-full or half-empty. Peter simply takes the glass, drinks it, and says "empty."

Radio

Adventures in Odyssey has an episode where Connie becomes the valedictorian. One of the things she has to do on stage however is say a prayer. So the principal of the college and her tutor let her write a prayer, only to find it makes references to Jesus which offends other members of the faculty. So the principal says she should pray the college's "acceptable" prayer. He adds that if she doesn't pray the "acceptable" prayer he'll stop her during her prayer and get her in more trouble. However, her tutor says if she wants to say her own prayer, she (and some other faculty members) will support her. On the day itself Connie makes the decision to...not pray at all!

In Deadlands, Dr. Darius Hellstrome is pretty adept at taking the third option. During the Great Rail Wars, all the good rail routes got taken around the Rocky Mountains, meaning he'd either have to fight one of the other Rail Barons for territory, or commit financial suicide by trying to build track through the Rocky Mountains. Instead, he takes a third option by creating an invention that allows him to dig underneath the Rocky Mountains, which had the added benefit of hiding his progress from his competitors.

He did it again in The Last Sons Plot Point Campaign where he exploited a loophole where the Sioux forbid any outsiders from laying track on their lands. After all, they didn't say anything about laying track under their lands. Surprisingly, nobody suspected that he'd take the same third option he previously took.

Realizing that his life would eventually end in one way or another, Hellstrome could either plan to take all his work with him to the grave or find a successor. Instead, he created an automated process that could indefinitely preserve his mind in the event that he died, thus allowing him to live well into the Hell on Earth era two centuries later.

Averted in the Deadlands: Hell on Earth adventure Unity (which also was the intro to Deadlands: Lost Colony). At the end of the scenario, a mad computer controlling the starship forces the characters to choose one of them to voluntarily sacrifice themsleves, or it will kill everyone on board the ship. The authors of the scenario went to great lengths to assure that there is no third option. The only way to save everyone on board is to do as it commands and have someone sacrifice themselves for The Needs of the Many.

In the Battletech universe, Clan Nova Cat decided to fight on the side of the Second Star League, since to them the entire point of the Clan Invasion was to rebuild the Star League in the first place. This was generally seen as treasonous by the other Clans, which told them in something called a Trial of Abjuration to get out of Clan space or be destroyed. This left them with no particularly good options: they could either effectively refuse the Abjuration, which would get it upgraded to a Trial of Annihilation (which is exactly what it sounds lik]) or they could go to the Inner Sphere and conquer a new homeland, where they would get absolutely destroyed by the Second Star League they had just effectively joined. The Draconis Combine actually offered them a third option in taking over the Irece Prefecture (and thus becoming an effective buffer state against the Clans), but just accepting this would be against Clan honor and Clan Nova Cat would lose all of its face and suffer internal revolt. The Nova Cats came up with a fourth option by goading the Combine into a series of Trials of Absorption that the Nova Cats rigged to lose.

Notable examples include having a wire-thin Aerospace Pilot phenotype arm-wrestling the biggest infantryman the Combine could find, calling "Edge!" on a coin flip, a soccer match the Nova Cats lost 4-3 after penalties, an "aerospace simulator duel" that was actually who could get the highest score on shoot-'em-up arcade game, and a "contest of stamina" that saw another small Clan aerospace pilot hospitalized with severe alcohol poisoning.

How this rules-lawyering still managed to be honorable as far as the Clans were concerned can be explained by the explanation given by the Clanner who called the previous coin-flip, IIRC: "What if it had landed on its edge? Think of the glory." Meaning the glory of a win against such odds.

One Pathfinder module has you breaking into a warehouse in Riddle Port in order to question the the guards. after accomplishing this and taking out all of the guards you can then loot the warehouse and find several potions and weapons. Far more than you could ever carry. Upon leaving the warehouse a group of thugs will threaten to kill you if you don't give them what you stole. You can either fight them off or hand over the goods and they will leave you alone. OR you can simply point out to them that they could just rob the currently unguarded warehouse which would take less effort while being more profitable. They're pretty stupid though so it is actually possible to fail the diplomacy check.

DMs in any Pen-and-Paper RPG experience this happening way too frequently. In fact, the more the DM tries to prevent this from happening by being over-prepared, the more intent the players will be on making this happen.

The Merchant of Venice: Launcelot has to decide between continuing to work for Shylock, whom he sees as "the devil", or running away...which would be committing a sin, thereby putting him in the service of the real devil. He gets out of the dilemma when his father shows up and helps him to lawfully switch jobs.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is an interesting example. Hermia has to decide between marrying Demetrius or being put to death, with the "third option" of becoming a nun. She takes a fourth option, running off with Lysander to get away from the laws of Athens.

Visual Novels

Sakura Oogami from Danganronpa took one. It's eventually revealed at the end of case 4's trial that the reason Monobear was able to persuade Sakura to be The Mole was because Monobear was holding the Oogami dojo hostage. Sakura either had to kill someone and thus lose her moral integrity, which would emotionally destroy her (and cause her to be bloodily executed if she can't get away with it), or lose her family's beloved dojo which is the other important thing in her life... And what does she do? She kills herself, which simultaneously satisfies the dojo-saving requirement of killing someone (her own person) while preserving Sakura's moral integrity by not actually killing any of the others.

The sequel had a dilemma of the same kind. Option A: everyone leaves the islands... including the Mastermind. And no, its escape cannot be impeded if this option is choosed. Option B: stay on the islands as prisoners to keep the Mastermind trapped. Then some help comes and offers option C, which takes the best of A and B as the Mastermind dies and everyone else escapes... but most of them will recover their erased memories. Which aren't pleasant.

After Saber nearly wipes her magical energy empty with the Excalibur, Shirou is initially faced with two options as to how to restore her energy: 1. transfer his energy to her, which is out of the question due to his poor magic skill. 2. Have her kill humans and steal their energy, which he doesn't want to do for obvious reasons. Later, however, Rin reveals that there is a third option: have sex with Saber. Too weak as a magus to transfer magic, and too moral to slaughter the lives of innocents, Shirou hesitatinglytakes option three.

Parodied in the fake 'dead-end', on Fate route, where Shirou tells Saber they will fast. Tiger and Illya turn him into a cyborg with gatling guns, and offer him a chance to 'join the Tigers willingly, or be brainwashed and turn into a machine.' His response? Turn on the gatling guns.

Juniper's Knot: The demon girl is trapped within a magic circle. At least one life form must be inside the circle at all times, so someone has to take her place in order for her to escape from her prison. The boy has to either exchange places with her or leave her to her fate. He chooses to instead plant a tree within the circle, thereby substituting the life of the tree for hers. It works.

To get to the secret Music Test in Radical Dreamers you have to choose an invisible third option at one point in the game.

Taking one of these forms the crux of the True Ending of Steins;Gate. Okabe is faced with two equally awful timelines: the Alpha timeline, where Mayuri dies and SERN completes their time machine and turns the world into a dystopia, or the Beta timeline, where Kurisu is stabbed to death and her father plagiarizes her paper on time travel, sparking World War III. Obviously, Okabe doesn't want either of these timelines to come to past. However, none other than his future self, driven by his failure to change the Beta timeline, provides the third option: the Steins;Gate timeline, where Okabe Tricked Out Time to save Kurisu and the time travel paper burns in a plane fire.

Webcomics

In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, creator Chris Hastings chose a third option in regards to the question of whether or not to include shading in the strips. He hired a colorist.

In Ansem Retort, Xemnas asks Axel how he plans on stopping Xemnas and saving Sora at the same time? Axel's response? He's fine with one of two and kills Sora himself.

Parodied in a guest strip for Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures , which presents a standard Good Angel, Bad Angel scenario regarding the purchase of an expensive colored pencil set with money earned from donations. By the time it's over, however, both sides agree on her alternative solution: "LARCENY WAS NOT THE ANSWER!"

Near the end of the "Snowsong" arc of Dominic Deegan, Oracle For Hire, Snowsong turns herself into ice and orders Gregory (to whom she's frozen herself) to make a choice - save her life via magic and give her ice golem time to destroy the city of Barthis, or smash her to pieces and kill her so he can stop the golem. Gregory merely smiles, removes the spells on himself (which turns her back to normal) and uses another set of spells to turn them into a kinetic force powerful enough to shatter the golem on impact.

Sil'lice of Drowtales and her badly wounded and exhausted army were given two options by their enemies, live by surrendering, or die fighting. Sil'lice's gaze goes over her bloody and exhausted army and she makes the decision of live... By fighting and leads her army into battle. They defeat the enemy, but almost their entire force is killed off and they completely lose the war in the end.

In Erfworld, Vinny Doombats suggests two options for escaping an enemy trap, after warning Ansom that "You won't like 'em." because they leave the enemy with a free hand to finish off Ansom's siege train. Ansom chooses the third option of taking his chances with the trap and ordering a hunt for the enemy's raiding force.

This is Parson's MO. Faced with the decision between fighting a losing battle and surrendering the stronghold? Parson orders his remaining casters to cast Animate Dead... on the volcano the stronghold is sitting on, blowing away the stronghold and the enemy. Parson later wonders if the titular RPG-Mechanics Verse is designed to promote outside-the-box thinking.

Parson mentions that this was the entire point of the table-top campaign he was running when he got summoned: he was putting his players into a situation unwinnable by conventional means just to see if they'd come up with something else. He's clearly a big fan of this trope. When he's first presented with the hopeless tactical situation he asks himself "What Would Ender Do?"

In 510, Sam and Helix give two options about where to fly their ship. Florence says, "Actually, we need to go the spaceport." Sam wasn't expecting this third option.

In 1803, Florence has to decide whether to help Sam or the police. Florence flips a coin, but Sam unexpectedly snatches the coin, so it doesn't land heads or tails. This induces Florence to take a third option, "Prepare the ship for the mission."

In A Girl and Her Fed, the Girl lists three unacceptable options fordealing with four hundred brainwashed human superweapons and wraps up the list with, "Sounds like the fourth choice is your only option."note For the record, the three choices were: Leave the agents as is (and in mental anguish), shut the Pocket Presidents down completely (who knows what contingency plan that would trigger) or kill them all (they sicced Ben on someone they knew had been hunting down malfunctioning agents). The fourth option: Do for them what Ben accidentally did for The Agent: Nerf the chips and let them heal on their own.

Homestuck: The newly-revived Aradia is holding Bec Noir in place with her time powers. However, she can't hold him there forever, giving her the choice of releasing him and dying now or holding him in place and dying when she eventually runs out of power. Her solution? Release him, then use his own space-bending powers against him to run straight to his power source and the dream bubbles of her friends.

Typheus teaches John how to do this by drowning John in oil. John can't turn into wind in order to escape and using his new Reality Warper powers to teleport away would prove pointless to his objectives. So, he decides to teleport all of the oil (All of it) across the entire narrative up to that point instead. Thus, John comes one step closer to both learning to control his powers and completing his personal quest.

When John is using his retcon powers to fix the timeline he comes to a difficult impasse; Vriska needs to be kept alive to fix things, but if she isn't killed by Terezi when attempting to leave the asteroid than she'd lead Bec Noir to the other trolls and get everyone killed. So John decides to just punch the shit out of her. If she's unconscious she can't leave can she?

Gary manages to take one on a very important decision, accidentally. The "sex contest" between Sonya and Yuki is over who will become his girlfriend, and hence, though they don't know it, will decide who gets to take his virginity. It ends in disaster, and Gary and Yuki's semi-professional therapist Kiley have to try and clear up the mess. Gary then ends up having sex with Kiley.

Later, in Paris, Senna and Sandra fall into an argument over which one of them Gary should spend time with, and whether this should involve "high culture" or "geek culture". Gary's third option involves all of them taking a trip to Brussels. It Makes Sense in Context.

"Vengeful" in morphE is given the choice of either fighting a young child to the death or both her and the kid being killed for refusing to fight. Her choice is to give the kid a shard of broken tile and order him to kill her so that he can live. Also serves as a character defining moment, as she recovers from being killed.

The PCs try in #428 to determine which one of three identical-looking skeletons is the real Big Bad, and which are the decoys. They have only one shot at guessing. The answer is: they're all decoys. The fourth (and real) one is currently invisible and flying right next to them on his zombie dragon.

More stereotypically, in #327 they are confronted with two guardians: one always lies; the other always tells the truth. They both have said which is the "correct" path. The party is about to begin trying to ascertain whom to believe when Haley shoots one. The guards' instinctive reactions to this show who's telling the truth and who isn't.

The pacifist Celia is held captive by the Greysky City Thieves' Guild, and Roy is encouraging her to fight back, as in a D&D-esque world, it's kill or be killed. She opts for legal negotiation instead.

When a Huecuva and a ninja assassin start fighting over which one of them will kill Hinjo, he suggests a compromise called 'giant dwarf with a hammer.'

Thog pulled two in two strips. A fight broke out and Thog was unarmed, till he kicked the door in half and wielded it. The next strip, Thog did not want to hurt Elan (after the two had become "friends" and broke out of prison) so Thog just started to smash Haley instead.

Tailsteak's website has a series of comics called "TQ" (short for "tertium quid", "third option" in Latin) in which the titular character steps into a debate between a hippie and a rich businessman to tell them they're both wrong about such-and-such an issue, to the annoyance of both.

A later comic shows a heated argument about whether there should be one or two spaces between sentences. Then someone suggests a linebreak after every sentence.

This comic has a guy who can't decide whether to report the day's temperature in degrees Celsius or degrees Fahrenheit. So he goes with radians instead.

In Tower of God, the Ranker Quant is at one point put in a bind by his examinees, being told to either hand over the badge of the It or let the hostages, other examinees, die. He tells that they can try and draw blood, but the moment they do, everybody will die. By his hands.

Parodied in Two Guys and Guy: Frank says he needed to "think outside the box" to win a chess match. He chose to do something that landed him in jail.

A minor conflict arose in Kevin & Kell when both Rachel and Joan asked Lindesfarne to be her bridesmaid, to the point of bribery. Lindesfarne, who didn't want to choose between two good friends, started looking into holograms, but Rachel and Joan found their own third option: they asked her to officiate the ceremony instead.

Web Original

Fatebane frequently chooses a bizarre out-of-box-thinking way of getting out of seemingly impossible situations in Associated Space, to the extent that his companion lampshades this tendency:

"What?" David looked doubtful. "There's a third option? Crazy and daring?"

Uncyclopedia insists that in a dilemma of two options, there is always a third option... cake.

Always delicious. Never complicated. Just cake.

Accomplished by Jesse Cox of OMFGcata during a Let's Play of the DLC of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Rather than give in to a Sadistic Choice of rescuing a crucial witness or several innocents, he successfully reasons out where the poison gas threatening them is and destroys it instead.

In a review of Star Trek: Voyager Neelix offers the advice that when facing a crossroads, sometimes you should take the third path. Chuck points out that following this metaphor, the third path would be back the way you came.

Toho Kingdom Toons has one in one of their earlier cartoons, where Gabara offers Little Godzilla a potion that could kill him. You have the option of saying "YES" OR "NO", but regardless of which choice you pick you ultimately get the 3rd option of "He should resist this peddler of peculiar potions @ all costs!"

In Noob, Gaea ended up taking an option that turned out to be just as bad, if not worse than the other offered to her: pay her new guild's debts out of her own pocket despite being The Scrooge as Guild Master responsibility, have her incompetent guildmates come up with the money or be thrown in jail. She choose leaving the guild so she's no longer Guild Master, only to have her debtor basically reply "You know this keeps you from joining any of our faction's guilds until you pay up, right ?".

Discussed in Star Wars in 3-D!!!. Matt mentions iTunes as a third option to Blockbuster and Netflix.

In Psychic Octopus & Oil Spills, Matt takes a third option between calling the octopus an octopus and calling the octopus an octopi:

Matt: This octopus - is it "octopus", or "octopi"? [Beat] This octo is named Paul, and he was born in England, but he lives in Germany.

A Giant Sucking Sound: The premise of the story is Ross Perot winning the 1992 election. Unfortunately, he has trouble getting much of his agenda threw Congress, so he forms the populist Freedom Party, made mostly of moderate Republicans, conservative Democrats, mavericks, political fringes, and forever dismantles the two party system.

Video game reviewer Caddicarus has a system where he "slaughters" a bad game by shooting it, or "salvages" it by beaming it up with a transporter. In his review of Destruction Derby 2, he declares that the game isn't quite bad enough to slaughter since he got some enjoyment out of it, but not quite good enough to salvage. He instead opts to "slauvage" it by beaming it up halfway, then shooting it. A few games since have gotten the "slauvage" too.

In Journeyquest, sir Glorian does this all the time. In the Temple of All Dooms (technically the Temple of Some Dooms, or as the Orcs call it, the Temple of Select Dooms), there's the classic puzzle with two gargoyles guard two doors. One can only speak the truth, the other can only lie. One of the doors is the correct way, the other leads to certain death. The normal solution to this dilemma is to ask the right questions and think before making a decision... Unless you're an Obliviously EvilBlood Knight with a love for fighting, in which case the solution is to ''kill one of the gargoyles, throw the other down one of the halls and if he survives, that must be the right way.

A skit for MTV's website had Anthony Mackie and Paul Bettany both trying to convince Josh Horowitz to buy an action figure of the respective Avenger they portray in the movies (The Falcon for Mackie and The Vision for Bettany) for his nephew. After several minutes of both actors arguing and taking shots at each other's careers, Josh buys an Iron Man figure instead. This causes Mackie and Bettany to angrily yell "Downey!" in unison.

In this instructional video on orbital mechanics, the creator faces a dilemma: Give distances in kilometers and alienate his American viewers, or give distances in miles and be a scientific neanderthal. His solution? Give the distances in furlongs, thereby confusing everyone.

Ruby Quest: Late in the game, the players come across Jay, who's trapped in the water filtration system by hooks stuck in his body. Weaver expected that they'd either leave him or Mercy Kill him, but the players chose to save him and take him with them when they exit the facility.

Miscellaneous

The glass with water in half of it. Half full, or half empty? A joke says that an engineer will answer, "The glass is twice as large as it needs to be."

Played with in a classic The Far Side cartoon. The first two people say "half empty" and "half full" respectively, a third goes back and forth between the two before forgetting the question, while a fourth looks at the glass and goes, "HEY! I ordered a cheeseburger!"

"The lesson: If the optimist says the glass is half full, and the pessimist says the glass is half empty, the physicist ducks."

The surrealist says the glass is a giraffe wearing a necktie

The optimist says, the glass is half-full. The pessimist says the glass is half-empty. The realist says "Yep. That sure is a glass alright." The idealist says one day, cold fusion from the glass will provide unlimited energy and end wars. The capitalist says if he bottles the glass and gives it a New Age-y name, he can make a fortune. The communist says the glass belongs to everyone in equal measure. The sexist says the glass isn't going to fill itself, honey-bun. The nihilist says the glass does not exist and neither does he. The opportunist says he knows there's a T-shirt in here somewhere. (This is a famous T-shirt).

The liar says the glass is all the way full.

In an EddieIzzard routine people is asked if they would like "Cake or death?" Everyone responds "Cake" and eventually the cake runs out. To which the next person replies "So my choices are... or death?? I'll take the chicken."

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